


For My Best Girl

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Domestic, Established Relationship, Flowers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Panties, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Steve Rogers, Schmoop, Uneasy attitudes towards Bucky's prothetic arm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 14:58:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14523138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: There are flowers on Bucky’s doorstep.





	For My Best Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Updated! Now with a beginning, middle, and end. This is the first seed from the [Mental Mimosa](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1012767) series to bloom into a full fic--which seems only apropos.

There are flowers on Bucky’s doorstep. Not the sickly kind the kids pull from the grass between brownstones, but a full-on dozen roses. In a vase and everything. Just sitting there on the stoop.

It’s a miracle the things haven’t been lifted, that the wind hasn’t knocked the little card from the rickety metal stand stuck inside: _For my best girl_ , it says. _See you tonight_.

The thing isn’t signed. It doesn’t need to be. There’s only one person in the world brave enough to write something like that, much less dictate it to a florist and have it carried across town to sit on Bucky’s doorstep: Steve. 

He’ll want to see them when he comes over later, set on the kitchen counter or maybe the mantel--someplace prominent and impossible to miss. He’s territorial like that sometimes, when he gets back from a mission. Especially when things go badly, when he gets afraid, when the thought of Bucky, he says, is all that kept him together; sticky tape and safety pins over the jagged edges of his heart.

Bucky unlocks the door and gingerly scoops up the vase, clutches it to his chest. The petals brush his face and finds their way under his chin, a sweet-smelling sweep, and yeah, he’ll be wearing turtlenecks for a week after Steve gets through with him, a chain of roses sucked into his skin, bit, bruises that he won’t want to hide. But he will, if Steve asks him to.

The stairs are a challenge on a good day and now, with a freaking army of flowers in his arms, he has to take it slow, one step at a time, leaning hard against the bannister and letting his prosthetic arm take most of the weight. One step. A second. A third. 

He hates it when Steve is gone, blown off to some hot spot with Stark and Banner, whoever, fighting the good fight, a fight that never ends, it seems like, no matter how often the Avengers show up to kick somebody’s ass. He’d been on the team for a while after he got back, after his marbles got unscrambled, but it hadn’t suited him, picking up a gun again. Even if every shot was truly righteous, deployed for all the best reasons, he hated killing, hated knowing that every squeeze of his finger drew out someone else’s blood.

He’d expected Steve to argue with him, to try and talk some hardheaded Rogers logic into him, but Steve had reached for him instead, wrapped his arms around Bucky’s body and buried his face in Bucky’s hair. “Whatever you want,” he said, in a voice like velvet sandpaper. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

Bucky had grabbed at him, dug his nails into Steve’s back and let out a long, uncertain breath. “I want some peace and quiet, Stevie.”

Steve kissed him then, a sharp, sweet thing that brooked no quarter. “Then you’ll get it, Buck. Ok? I’ll make sure.” 

Stark had picked up their apartment, Bucky was sure of it. It wasn’t anything fancy—one bedroom, one bath—but it was in a real neighborhood, with real people, not in some shiny bleak tower that loomed over it all. The sun shone here; kids still swarmed the sidewalks in the evenings, laughing and calling to each other in the dark. His neighbors yelled at each other sometimes or made love too loudly; the guy who lived below him played his stereo too loud on the weekends; the super’s dog barked at every damn person who walked by the building. It was messy, life here, and real, and Bucky felt more like himself in this building than he had, jesus, for over half of his life.

And when he isn’t off trying to save humanity from its own bullshit, Steve lives here, too. It feels like old times. No. It feels like the right time at last. 

Inside, he sets the vase on the counter and steps back to take them in. He loves roses. They’re so fucking hardy. Everybody associates them with cotton candy-type love, delicate creatures whose beauty is quick to fade. But if you take care of them, water them, their loveliness lingers for days. Even when they start to wither, the outlines of their glory remain.

He dries them out sometimes when he can’t quite bear to let them go. Settles them in empty wine bottles and peppers the bedroom with them, the nightstands, the dresser, tucked in among all the random crap that collects there: coins that aren’t quarters, ticket stubs. Half torn receipts from the bodega that he’s scribbled some lines on; seeds of poems, maybe, or a grocery list, a question he wants to ask Steve like _how do you turn off an iPad?_ or _can we recycle Styrofoam?_ or _was it ok last night? was I good_? 

The last ones he knows the answers too; Steve never lets him forget. But he needs to ask anyway, needs Steve to say it. Always wants to hear it again:

_You were so good, Buck. You always are, my sweet girl._

The first time Steve had said it, it’d been a throwaway, nonsense, a few words in a hot frenzied flood. They were in the kitchen, dinner abandoned. Bucky was on the floor, his knees kissing hardwood as Steve fucked his mouth, his fingers wound in Bucky’s hair, knotted like promises.

“So pretty,” Steve breathed. “You’re fucking gorgeous like this, so—god, Buck, don't stop."

He’d looked up and found Steve’s eyes and Steve made the most beautiful noise, the same one he had when they were kids and he was five seconds from losing it, and then he’d said, sweet slurry: “Yes, just like that, baby. Yes, oh, _fuck_ —that’s my girl.”

Steve’s mouth had always run a mile a minute when they fucked, an endless stream of sound: sometimes pretty, sometimes scolding or desperate, so it was possible he’d said it before, called Bucky his girl. But it’d never sunk in before, never struck home, the way it had that night.

There was a time, once, when the flare of want in his gut, the icy-good way his skin crawled at the words, would have scared him, sent him to his feet and out of the apartment, down into the street in search of a real girl, a soft body to bury himself in to convince himself that he was still a real man. When they’d first been together, it had scared him, how much he liked being queer, how good Steve made him feel, how hot it made him to have Steve stretched above him, bouncing unsteady on Bucky’s cock, one spindly hand on his own dick and the other spread over Bucky’s heart. He’d spent more than a few nights fucking girls out of sheer terror, afraid of what he was, what Steve made him feel. It had taken time to come to terms with what he wanted; time to figure out that desire wasn’t the same thing as logic—it was the farthest thing, sometimes, from a straight line between two points. He’d wasted too much time back then worrying about stuff like that, time he was afraid, later, dying piece by piece on Zola’s table, that he’d never get back.

So now what mattered was that something _did_ turn him on, not why. And fuck, that night, Steve calling him a girl lit him up hard.

“Good, you’re so good.” Steve’s thumb caught the corner of his lips and his voice broke, fell away tattered, and Bucky ached for him, ached, because he felt like that, too: ripped up and hot and frayed. “Fuck,” Steve said, “Gonna come for you, my sweet girl. Just for you. Would you like that?”

There was a sound in Bucky’s throat, desperate, and his eyes were, too, pleading, and Steve pulled out with a growl and came all over his face, white and hot, and his cock was still jerking when he hauled Bucky up and kissed him, smeared the mess into Bucky’s chin as Bucky clawed at Steve’s neck.

“I need you inside me,” he panted. “Damn it, Stevie, get your hands on me already.”

Steve grinned, syrup lazy. “Love it when you ask for what you want.”

But he couldn’t, not then, not quite, not until he was flat on his back with Steve arched wicked over him, easing that last little bit in.

“Am I your girl?” he’d said. 

He felt Steve startle, the hesitation in his hips, the halt. “Buck, I was just—I don’t know where that came from, before. I didn’t mean—I know you’re not—”

He lifted his head. Said it again. Louder this time, so there’d be no question. “Hey, Rogers: am I your girl or not?”

Steve’s eyes softened. “Depends. Do you want to be?” 

He closed his eyes and fell back, overwhelmed. “Yeah, I do. _Yes._ ”

“Then,” Steve’d said, “of course you are.” He kissed Bucky’s throat, gave him some teeth; pulled out a little, pushed his way in. “But not just any girl. Mmm, no. You’re my best girl, aren’t you, Buck?”

It wasn’t a card they played all the time. Every now and then, when Bucky was feeling sassy, he’d spread himself over Steve’s lap and call him an old man and dare him to fuck his best girl to the moon. Sometimes, Steve would do something schmoopy like send flowers or fill the bedroom with candles and then take his time, trace every inch of Bucky’s body with his mouth and tell him what a good girl he was for being still, tell him how sweet he tasted, how goddamn beautiful he was, how lucky Steve was to have him for his own.

But they’re on the same page today, aren’t they, between the roses on the doorstep and the box that’d come yesterday, the one Bucky hasn’t let himself open yet. It’s a present for Steve, one he hadn’t been sure when he’d work up the courage to give him but tonight, yeah—tonight would be perfect. _Welcome home, soldier. Job well done._  

He looks at his watch. He should hurry. It’ll take him some time to get ready. 

His arm, first. The prosthetic one. He pops it off and sticks it right in its cradle. The relief when he gets it off is instant, electric. It’s a tool, the arm, that’s how he thinks of it; a means of passing through the world with one less obvious thing about him that’s different. It’s not that he hates the thing, but he wears it more for his clients. He’s a contractor, an overpaid problem-solver—thanks again, Stark—and a good one, but he’d noticed right away that people got twitchy when he showed up without it, no matter how slick he was dressed. They talked to him in pastels and offered him water and treated him like he was broken—the sort of obligatory kindness he couldn’t bear. He knew they meant well, most of them, but it made his skin crawl, being treated like that, like he was broken, like it was their responsibility to make up for the shit the world had thrown his way.

So he wears the arm to work, nine days out of ten and any time he meets with a client. It’s easier for everybody that way.

But at home, he can’t wait to take the fucker off and lock it up.

He boots the charging box to the back of the closet and slams the door, satisfied.

A shower next. Water pounding on his skin, efficient and hard, knocking the smell of the city away, the stink of a summer day. A clean towel, a comb, a ghost of his face through the steam. 

Now. Now he’s ready.

In the bedroom, he slides open his sock drawer and draws the box out. It’s slim and filled with creamy pink paper inside that cradles a whisper of silk and lace, frames it. His cheeks are hot and his knees are shaking, warm jelly. They’re beautiful, a lot more delicate that he’d expected; they look like one tug and they’d crumble, delicate ash in Steve’s eager hands. God.

He leans his weight on the dresser and steps into them, careful, tugs them up his hips until they’re sitting just so. He looks down, strokes his fingers down the lace. Yeah, yeah. They fit.

They’re deep blue, his panties, but in the lamplight, they look almost black: a starless midnight. He’d ordered them on a 2 AM whim, entranced by the way they looked on the screen and the flutter they set in his gut. He didn’t know why he wanted them except that he did, so he’d pulled out his credit card and hit _purchase_ before he could change his mind. They’d look good on him, he’d thought, and oh fuck, he was right. He looks down. He stares.

There's a lace trim around the edge and on his hips, the lace lays over old scars but doesn’t hide them. His cock is fully covered in silk--the things are practically modest--and yet he feels like he's laid bare, a flower with its petals peeled back. On his skin, the silk feels like living water, fed by the blood in his body as it races towards his cock and he closes his eyes, prays to whatever gods might be listening that Steve gets home soon because he is dying, dying to touch.

He counts to ten, twenty, twenty-five, before he trusts himself to move again, to pull back the covers and crawl into bed and pray that much louder for the sound of the key in the lock. 

Thank fuck it doesn’t take long.

“Buck?” Steve’s boots by the front door, his voice ringing through the living room. “You home?”

He raises his voice. “I’m in here.”

A rush, a gallop, and Steve’s framed in the doorway wearing civvies and a wolfish grin. “Hey,” he says. “You got my flowers.”

“Yeah.”

Wide eyes, faux naiveté. “Do you like them?”

“Look, I got naked for you, handsome. What do you think?” 

“I think,” Steve says, reaching for the top button of his shirt, “that my girl missed me.”

“Eh,” Bucky says with a shrug. “Maybe.”

“You know what else I think?”

“What’s that?”

The button-up hits the floor, gets crowned by Steve’s belt. “I think she’s dying to show me how much.” 

He reaches for a look, finds one that’s haughty. “Pretty sweet on yourself, aren’t you Rogers?”

Steve opens his fly. “Huh. You see something here that says I shouldn’t be?”

“Take the rest of it off already and I’ll let you know.”

Steve doesn’t make a show of it, just kicks off his shoes and peels out of his jeans, stands there wearing only a smirk. “So?” he says. “What’s the verdict?”

His chest is flushed and his cock is, too, and the body may be different, the voice, but the color of his skin when he's turned on, it hasn’t changed. Not in 70 years. Still looks like crushed roses.

“Hmm,” Bucky says. “I guess you’ll do. C’mere. I got you something.”

“You did, huh?”

“Yeah.” He pats the edge of the covers, pull them back just a touch. “Unwrap your present.”

“My—?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, Stevie? Jesus.”

Steve laughs, snatches at Bucky’s fist, turns back the sheets, and stops, stops; his breathing, his body suddenly still.

“Buck,” he says, rough. “Oh, Buck. Look at you, baby.”

He takes back the blankets, tosses them free. Does his best not to blush. “You know, you can do more than look.”

“Yeah, but you’re fucking gorgeous. Give your old man a moment to take it all in.” Steve’s fingertips find the edge, trace. Delicate, that touch. Careful.

His voice is softer than he wants. “Do you like them?”

“Like?” Steve says. “Yeah, I’d say so.” He brushes the base of Bucky’s cock, slides his fingers up achingly slow. “And you, ah, you don’t seem averse to them either.” 

“No,” he says faintly, “no I am fucking not.”

“You bought these for me.” Pleasure there, a tiny marvel.

“Yeah.”

“Mmm. Only for me though, right?" 

“Only for—?”

Steve’s eyes darken, summer thunderheads. “Me. These are mine. So I don’t want you wearing them outside of the house.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to him, god, he’d never, and yet as soon as Steve says it, forbids it, it seems like a fucking fantastic idea.

“Why not?” he says. “Why the hell can’t I?”

That gets him a slap on the knee, a look that would melt solid rock. “Because I said so.”

“But they’re pretty,” Bucky says, playing at petulant. “You said so yourself. And they feel good. Maybe I should get some other colors, huh, so I could wear them out every day.”

Steve’s expression is still hard, but his gaze is cut through with amusement. “No, you said they’re mine. Just like you are, Buck. And that means I get to decide when and where you wear them.”

“Bullshit.”

“What happened to my good girl? Hmm?" Steve spreads a palm over Bucky’s cock, gives him just enough pressure to make him see stars. "I go away for a couple weeks and you get mouthy?”

“No,” Bucky shoots back, “you go away for two weeks and come back fucking bossy.”

It’s their game, now. They’ve fallen into rhythm. It feels so fucking good.

“Maybe,” Steve says, snide, “I don’t like the idea of you walking around all day in these things stiff like this. Because you would be, wouldn’t you?” His hand stirs to life, starts to slide down again, up. “You’d be sitting at your desk hard as an anvil with these little things snug against your dick.”

Bucky bites his lip, sucks back a gasp. “Wouldn’t." 

Steve laughs. “Oh yes you would. And how do you think I’d be able to concentrate on anything knowing you were wearing my present and I didn’t get to see it. When you were somewhere I couldn’t give you the attention you need.”

“Fuck, baby—”

“If you were really my best girl, you’d do what I tell you. You wouldn’t always make such a fuss.”

“You need to stop that,” Bucky says. “You need to— _oh_ —fucking stop.”

“What?” Another stroke, faster. Again. “Why? You don’t like this?”

“Didn’t say that, didn’t—" And then Bucky can’t talk, doesn’t want to because Steve’s tugged down the silk just enough to pull out his cock and he’s trapped between the cut of the fabric and the heat of Steve’s mouth, the catch of his throat, and it’s too much, too good, too fast. 

“Gonna come,” he says, the words almost a wail, and he’s clawing at Steve’s shoulder, yanking at his hair. “Stop it, stop it, fuck, or I’m gonna—”

Steve lets him go, gets out: “They’ll wash out just fine, sweetheart. Now be a good girl and let yourself come.”

His head is a diamond, smashed with a hammer, cracked by the weight of Steve’s tongue. “ _Steve_.”

“Come on, Buck. Mess up these pretty little things for me.”

He groans, his voice a ribbon ragged, tattered lace, and when Steve pins his hips down and sucks, spit dripping down over silk, he comes with a shout, a punch of sound that only stops when Steve crawls up to claim it, his grin a mile fucking wide.

They can't talk after that, only kiss, only touch like they have a thousand times, more. They’ve been together for what feels like a lifetime, apart for what feels like more, and there’s comfort in the familiar: in the cool hiss of lube on Steve’s fingers, the stretch; the sigh in Steve’s chest when he finally slides in and falls flush; the way that Steve laughs while they fuck, pure joy, pure pleasure; the sound of his voice when he comes, Bucky’s name flayed and reassembled, remade, this old good thing between them reimagined anew.

“I missed you,” Bucky says, “something awful.”

Steve raises his head from the pillow, his face flushed and dreamy. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He pokes Steve in the ribs. “Were the panties not a dead giveaway?” 

Steve grins. “The best kind.” 

“Good.”

“I really hate being gone like that. For so goddamn long. Hate leaving you here by yourself, which is”—he hesitates, just long enough for Bucky to see what’s coming—“you know, I was thinking, maybe you could stay in the tower next time I have to be gone. Stark’s got guest quarters to spare. Hell, whole guest floors probably. Nobody would bother you, if that’s what you wanted.”

He strokes his hand through Steve’s hair, winds his fingers in tangled ends, tugs. “No, babe. No way. This is where I want to be.”

Next door, the neighbors are fighting, the dull toothache of their argument seeping through the wall. Outside, there’s a cat yowling, an ambulance screaming up the next block. Somewhere, there’s a crisis brewing that will drag Steve away again. There always will be. Won’t there? 

“Steve?” 

“Yeah, Buck?”

“Why don’t you just stay here?”

“Hmmm?” Steve yawns, a big cat production. “Newsflash: I live here, you jerk.”

“I mean, next time they call you. Stark and all them. Maybe you could say no.”

He expects Steve to push back, to argue, but no, he leans over and feeds Bucky a kiss, a different kind now. A tentative promise. 

“Whatever you want,” Steve murmurs. “Whatever my girl wants, I’ll do my best to get her, ok? I’ll try.”

He tips a smile over Steve’s cheek, down to his lips. “That’s all I can ask for,” Bucky says. “Your best.”

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt: Courting and dating (courtship rituals; dating; blind dates; personal ads; traditional gestures such as flowers and chocolates; unusual gestures designed to win someone’s attention; showing off or displaying prowess; rivals seeking a character’s favor.)


End file.
